Wednesday, September 9, 2009

I'm Not Who I Was (Part III)

I didn't realize some of the consequences of my move to Hordeside.

Have you ever heard the phrase 'driving out of habit'? You are driving merrily along with the intention of going to a friend's house and suddenly you notice you've taken the exit for your office. You were 'driving out of habit'.

I've done quite a bit of that in the first few days that I've been Hordeside. I've walked myself into the Alliance portal room in Dalaran, and into the Alliance tent out at the Argent Tournament. Somehow those guys just aren't as happy to see me as they used to be.

Speaking of the Argent Tournament, that was probably the largest and most heartbreaking suprise. All my Argent Tournament progress had been reset. I was back as an Aspirant. I still had my Argent Pony, and my Champion Seals. But I had lost my Crusader Title, and my 'of Exodar' didn't become 'of Silvermoon'.

In addition, I lose many of the questing achievements I got leveling up in Northrend. I Toured the Fjord, Fo' Grizzle My Shizzle, and the like had been taken away and the quest counter had been drastically reduced.

I don't think I lost any pets or mounts. Both Miniwing and my Sprite Darter Hatchling came over. I was really happy that my Mechnostrider had become a Kodo.

My Knight-Lieutenant title became Blood Guard and my tabbard changed as well. I didn't recieve a Blood Knight tabbard, but the quest line is there for me to do if I want it. I still have the Charger, though it's the Blood Elf colors. My plan had been to buy the Argent Tournament Charger, but I'll need to get back to Champion status before I can do that.

I miss Stoneform and Mace Expertise, but I've come to love Arcane Torrent. We were doing the Daily heroic, which was Azjob-Nerub and we were fighting Anub'arak. The VenomSpitters came out. I stopped the first Venom Volley with Avenger's Shield and was able to interrupt the next cast with Arcane Torrent.

My Warrior friend who I had been doing 3s with switched over to Horde, but as of this writing our Druid hasn't. It looks like we might be getting a Resto Shaman to join us instead.

Battlegrounds have been intersting. Everything is backwards and turned around.

Wintergrasp was really nice, once I figured out where the Horde que up from. We know VoA will be up virtually whenever we want to raid it. I find myself mousing over the Alliance and trying to engage anyone I know, but sometimes there's a just a mass of people and I'm just swinging away. I did run into my old buddy Fireyes on the road to one of the towers and I got to experience what Tenacity feels like from the other end.

I went and got myself a haircut. I had to go with a real short spiky cut because every other option for Blood Elves clipped by shield or helmet.

Tuesday night, I ran into my old crew from Mal Katai that is now in Limitless. We were all outside of Trial of the Crusader. I couldn't talk to them so we just emoted back and forth. I've actually been a little gunshy about logging back into my Warrior or Hunter. I'm not really sure what kind of whispers I'm going to get.

Leaving the Warrior put a dent in my gold making as he was my DE bot. I rolled a Death Knight and actually got him out of the starting area to give me a banker. DKs come with a decent set of starting bags. The plan is to get him to 65 as quickly as I can, and then make him into a Tailor/Enchanter. That will give me access to the Gem, Bag and Enchanting mats market. I figure it'll be around 2k investment to get him powerleveled, but some of that I'll do AoEing old instances that I still need the achievement for.

I do like having a taller toon. The Blood Elf animations are decent. I used to know what spell I had cast just by my Dwarfs animation. After watching the same animations for 2 years, you start to get used to them. My Blood Elf seems to have this little jump punch that looks like he's trying to do SHO-RYU-KEN when my Libram procs. Thought I can't stand his laugh. I hate it.

I've been fairly fortunate so far in that I haven't needed to PuG much. Depite my faction change, I still view the Horde outside my own guild with some uneasiness. I can say, with a fair amount of confidence, that neither the Alliance nor Horde really has a claim on being 'more mature' side.

I also took the opportunity to tweak my UI a bit. One of the most frequently asked questions I get is how to get a UI similiar to the one I use. I've actually got an article in the works on that, but I'm waiting for Spartan to release it's new version. I'm using one of the Release Candidates that still has some issues. I have discovered Power Auras class and I'm really enjoying it.

Faction transfer seems a bit buggy actually. I transferred across (Horde to Ally), and had completed both Loremaster of Northrend and Outland. I kept L of NR, however two areas of NR were listed as incomplete. I had completed one area (Grizzly Hills) that I know had a fair number of Alliance quests. My BE Tabard became a second Guild Tabard (I recommend you don't do the quest line, it left a bad taste in my mouth, then again I'm so happy that I don't have "Seal of Corruption" any more). I'm presuming I'll need to redo all quest lines for phased areas (missing a fair number of Flight Points. And it's funny travelling to the Tourney grounts to do Valiant's quests using a Tabard teleport :-)

If you like the Lore, go to Nagrand and finish the epic quest line there... best Horde quest line in the game.